


your own pulse

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam/Cabeswater, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, The Raven King Spoilers, so many spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 16:05:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6711871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a mistake, laying your hands on the trunk, and it’s a mistake, willing yourself to feel <i>something</i>. You miss the leaves and you miss the rocks, you miss the constant rustle of Cabeswater’s comfort in your mind. You don’t need it now like you did, you know. But the rough bark under your palm feels empty, empty, and you feel empty too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your own pulse

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a pile of stuff from the timeskip that I have Questions about. Shoutout to [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) for beta reading even though she hasn't finished TRK haa

It has been one week since you saw Gansey die. It has also been one week since you saw Gansey come back to life, but your treacherous mind often leaves that part out. When you sleep, your brain rewrites history, ties the falsehood of the dreaming tree to the very real sight of Gansey dead in the road. You never even touched him but the dream whispers that it’s your fault and it’s permanent and you wake feeling like it’s not worth getting out of bed.

_He is alive_ , you tell yourself, staring at the cracked plaster of St Agnes’ ceiling and trying to count your breaths calm. _He is alive, and if I wanted, I could call him right now_.

You don’t call him. You have ten minutes in bed before your alarm starts to scream, and you spend every one of them eyeing the largest crack in the plaster, wondering if it’s getting worse, wondering if you’ll still be here by the time it’s a problem. Probably not. The end is in sight – eight more months of Aglionby and three jobs and then you have a clear path out, and none of your friends should even die in that time.

You gently probe your heart, looking for happiness. You don’t find any. Your alarm blares, merciless and impartial, and you get up and go to work.

 

School is frustratingly banal. Usually you can push through it and focus, because that’s what you do, because the future is right there in front of you with so few obstacles left. Today it feels impossible, with your arms still aching from work, with your head still ringing with nightmares. You reach to Cabeswater for comfort, and find nothing. It’s like you’ve gone deaf in your other ear, the world fuzzy and insulated without that green, vibrant pulse threaded through it. You only had the woods a few months, and you try to tell yourself that you shouldn’t hurt so much to have lost it. It doesn’t work.

Ronan’s not in school, and you understand that he’s never going to be in school again, that he would have stopped attending even if he wasn’t a mess of mourning. His mother and Noah gone at the same time. Declan brought Matthew down from DC though they’re not having a real funeral, just laying her to rest in a grove in the Barns. Blue’s family already held the ceremony for Noah, a wordless, aching event where you’d tried to accept that it had been his time seven years ago. The shake in Ronan’s shoulders had disagreed.

You should go and see him later. You should have gone to see him at some point in the last week, but whenever you think about his grief, prickling black and overwhelming, you lose your nerve. It’s more Gansey’s realm than yours, and being more to Ronan hasn’t changed that. Maybe it should have. Maybe you’re _less_ than you’re meant to be, and you flex your fingers, feel nothing but your own pulse in your palms, force your eyes onto the board even though they don’t take in a single word.

Beside you, you can feel Gansey’s attention, worried over you. You don’t think you’ve got it in you to attempt a smile, so you just avoid eye contact. _Your fault_ , says your dream, says the vision you lived with for so many months, and even now you’re still afraid that if you touch him he’ll break. His death had felt so much more real than his resurrection, and it seems like the lightest breeze could steal the magic from inside him and leave him lying boneless on the ground. You don’t look at him.

“Ganseyman, Parrish,” Henry Cheng greets, sliding up to you after the bell’s gone and while you’re still trying to tell your legs to move. He hasn’t actually taken Ronan’s place yet, not throwing the Vancouver crowd aside that easily, but he still gravitates towards the two of you in every break. Or, he gravitates towards Gansey. You get the feeling he’d like to get close to you, too, the way he’s always trying to catch your eye and offer one of his yearbook-cover smiles, but you’ve got nothing for him. The magician made connections, but you are no longer the magician and new connections feel beyond your reach right now.

You ghost along behind Gansey and Henry, as invisible as if he were Skip or Chip or anyone else at the school, and you manage a tight-lipped smile next time Gansey cranes his neck to check on you. The ground under your feet is still, unresponsive, no gleaming line for you to find yourself on. Your heartbeat is your own, unembellished. You feel like your centre of gravity is shot, and you drift along in Gansey’s wake while you try to re-orient yourself.

 

After school you have time, and after school you go with Gansey and Henry to Blue’s house, because it’s easier than going to face Ronan and it’s easier than leaving Gansey alone. You want Gansey out of reach, and you want him close enough you can see he’s still breathing, and you pull your legs up to your chest as you sit apart from them on the lawn.

Blue is facing her beech tree, the one her father was in, the one her father wordlessly fled from as soon as the demon was defeated. No one tried particularly hard to get him back. There is Blue and the tree, Blue and the tree, then just the tree, then Blue sprawled on her back in the dirt, laughing delighted. You grit your teeth against jealousy, try to sharpen it into something like wonder, something like love. She’s magical, she’s beautiful, she’s as _more_ as Gansey and Ronan, and Henry rushes to her side to assure her of this.

“Adam,” Gansey murmurs, taking a seat beside you. The grass is going to stain his chinos, waste noted by the little tally in your head that you’re not sure will ever be quiet. He’s studying you, head cocked, and you wish he wasn’t wearing his Aglionby sweater. “How have you been?”

“Fine,” you say. It’s not a lie. There’s nothing wrong with you. There is a full and total absence of things wrong with you, because you haven’t lost anything you needed, because no matter what you keep imagining, none of it is real. The silence of the world around you is suffocating, but not so much that you can’t still breathe. You suck in a breath to prove it to yourself.

Gansey is a king reborn, all your magic now managing his heartbeats. He smiles at you, faint and sad, tells you, “There are so many miracles ahead of you.”

 

Later, after the others have been lured inside by the scent of something either baking or burning, you approach the tree. It’s a mistake, laying your hands on the trunk, and it’s a mistake, willing yourself to feel _something_. You miss the leaves and you miss the rocks, you miss the constant rustle of Cabeswater’s comfort in your mind. You don’t need it now like you did, you know. But the rough bark under your palm feels empty, empty, and you feel empty too.

“Did you lose all of it?” Blue asks. You didn’t hear her come back outside, but your hearing has been worse this past week. She’s standing alone on the porch, framed by the light behind her, distant sound of Gansey and Henry fighting over pie filtering out from the house.

“Yes,” you admit. At least she asked bluntly, like Ronan would have. Both of them kept their magic. Both of them are stronger, if anything. The beech’s leaves murmur in the breeze, speaking a language you no longer understand. You take your hand off the bark.

Blue circles the tree, gazing up at the branches. She used to be the only one in a room full of psychics who couldn’t see what the others saw, and now she can stroke the beech’s trunk with a familiarity that you only had for two months. Jealousy is a stone between your molars. “It’s not like you’re the same,” she says, head cocked, considering. “You went through it all with us, you scryed, you saw things no one else has ever seen. You can’t have lost _all_ of it.”

“I am a regular, mundane human being. Like you used to be,” you snap, and you shouldn’t have snapped, but you are so _lonely_ without Cabeswater.

Blue tilts her head up in order to look down her nose at you, and says, “We’re not going to save you any pie.” She goes inside without you. You go home alone.

 

There is a Noah-shaped hole at Monmouth, and a Henry-shaped addition that isn’t trying to step into the space but is filling it anyway. You like him, you suppose, in a vague kind of way. Blue and Gansey certainly like him, and that should win him points with you, the way he can bring out Gansey’s luminous grin, how well his humour matches with Blue.

You are stuck thinking that it has only been one week and one day, and that’s not long enough. Ronan’s grief is a caustic thing, but you might do better stewing with him than trying to sit outside Monmouth with the others. They’re cleaning the Pig from the inside out, because it’s spattered with blood and black ooze. The upholstery on the back seat is ripped, from where the hands-that-weren’t-yours tried to tear anything they could. None of them mention it, which is kind. Your hands are as still and human as the rest of you now.

When Blue picks up the hose, Henry retreats for the sake of his hair. He settles beside you, and you nod, and wonder if there’s anything for you to say. _So you’re one of us now_. You wish Ronan was here too, so he could be cruel to Henry and make it easier for you to be kind. It’s a terrible thought, and you push it away, try to appreciate the moussed masterpiece that Gansey seems to love. You make a solid attempt at conversation: “Don’t see a lot of electric cars around here.”

“A tragedy, to be sure,” he says solemnly. A missed beat, and then, “Every time I thought I’d seen magic, you set the bar higher, Parrish. First the slate, and then that trick with the woods.”

‘That trick’. _Coping mechanism_ , you remind yourself, because it’s not his fault that he learned to translate stress into easy charisma instead of self-imposed isolation. “It was the only thing to do,” you manage. “And it’s not like I can do it again.”

“You’ve _done_ magic, though,” Henry says. There’s a bee in his hand, and it takes the space of a heartbeat for you to recognise it and not slap it out of his hands for Gansey’s sake. “Niall Lynch made this. He’s dead, but RoboBee still exists. Gansey still exists. That’s thanks to you.”

You’re not really interested in arguing this, not with Henry Cheng, not when it’s only been one week and one day. He saw what happened to Gansey, and coping mechanisms aside, he seems to have accepted the wonder of it too easily. He didn’t have months of nightmares, of anticipation, of everything promising a wretched tragedy birthed by his own hands. Gansey was dead, Gansey was alive. A trick. The culmination of all your magic, all of Ronan’s and Blue’s, a happy ending that has left you so desolately empty. College is a myth and the present is static in your deaf ear.

“If you lost _that_ ,” you say with a nod to the bee, words too sharp even as you try to temper them, “would you be the same person you were before you had it? Or would you be _less_ now you knew what you used to have?”

Henry looks away to think, and then his eyes drift further, catch Blue blasting Gansey in the face with the hose. “I think,” he says, “I might not need it so much anymore.”

Your lip curls, and you say, “So give it up, then.”

He smiles at you, and there is a sadness you don’t quite understand behind the expression. It reminds you of Gansey, and for a very fleeting moment, you can see exactly what draws him to Henry Cheng. “Believe me, Parrish, you were fearsome enough before you became a supernatural creature. You can be fearsome again without it.”

It’s over-intimate, but Gansey already told you that seems to be Henry’s specialty. He returns to the others as soon as the danger to his hair is diminished, and you stare at your knees and the sparse grass of the Monmouth lot and you try to remember who you used to be.

 

Gansey comes to you at St Agnes. The knock on the door is so unexpected, all your connections such worn, fraying things, that you couldn’t anticipate a visit. The appearance of Gansey is such a certain thing, because of course he’s here, of course he’s still worried about you, that’s all he does. Excuses about how you’ve got homework tonight and a shift in the morning die on your tongue, true as they might be, and you let him in.

“I got a text from Ronan,” he says. “Matthew and Declan are heading back up to DC tomorrow, and he’s going to move back into Monmouth for a bit. You should come over.” He says it like it’s a suggestion, but you suspect that if you don’t come over, you’ll be sending some unseen signal that you desperately need help. You make a note to go over, though you’re still not sure you’re up for facing Ronan. _He was there for you after Persephone died_ , you think, and the fact that you can’t do the same for him bites you harder.

“Henry and Blue both told me the same thing about you,” he says, after you take too long to respond. “In highest confidence, of course.”

You stiffen. Gansey’s going to tell you you’re marvellous, and Gansey’s going to tell you you’re wonderful, and right now when you won’t believe him, you’re not sure you could bear it. “And?” you try, guarded.

“I feel the same way.” He’s staring off to your cluttered wall planner, but he pulls his gaze back to you and offers a smile. “Possibly not _exactly_ the same, because Glendower wasn’t literally speaking to me, but I’m still changed. Cabeswater did not fix my circadian rhythms, and there is honestly nothing to do at four in the morning. Glendower is found, and my insomnia is dissatisfied.”

You thought he’d been doing a fine job of filling the void with people, but then again, it’s only been one week and three days, and Gansey’s restless hunger couldn’t have settled so quickly. The hunt for Glendower is the only way you’ve ever known him, and with that resolved, he’s as much as stranger to himself as he is to you. There is a new Gansey slowly stepping into his place, one that still loves you and Ronan and Henry and Blue, but you’ll need to learn him.

Just a little, you relax. “I miss it,” you admit. “I know it wasn’t long, but it was _there_ , and it cared. Even if you’re not about to die again, I feel so… powerless.”

“You don’t believe that?” Gansey sounds legitimately surprised, and the sound of it digs into you. “Adam. You’re marvellous. You’re wonderful.”

His words are scalding in their conviction. He offers a hand to you, his expression so gentle, comfort so easily offered. You think about being enough on your own, and you take it.

The touch is arcane electricity bursting through you palm and you feel it in Gansey’s every heartbeat, every breath, woven in the lines of his sweater. Cabeswater. Somewhere in your mind, ferns unfold with a rustle that sounds like _Adam_ , and you are flooded with overwhelming, outreaching love. Cabeswater always loved you, and Gansey always loved you, and it drowns you in a rush.

 “Oh,” you manage, staggered by the totality of it.

“Hm?” Gansey asks, and you realise he doesn’t notice a thing because it’s bound to the core of him, that Blue and Henry never reported the forest living inside him. This echo is yours, the welcome embrace of waiting branches, infinite fondness spooling out for you in an encompassing mess.

When you let go of Gansey’s hand, the feeling lingers, and you feel infinitely less alone. Gansey, with Cabeswater inside him, the sum of all your magic, looks infinitely less brittle. You find a smile for him, and his answering beam is blinding. “Right,” you try, “Ronan moves back tomorrow.”

“It would be good if you came,” Gansey starts, earnest. “Without Noah – “

“No, I know. I’ll come.” You weave your fingers through his, and there is no second shockwave, but you don’t think you need one.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I'd love to know what you though! You can also find me on tumblr over [here](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/) :D


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